21. Oli

21

OLI

I can get used to waking up in Nikos' strong arms.

The next morning, the sun is streaming in through the open windows, and the breeze drifting in cools my skin. We'd talked late into the night, with Nikos sharing more memories of his mother and growing up here in Greece. I could tell that it was bittersweet, especially when he'd slipped up and said that he'd always wished that she could meet the person he'd one day fall in love with.

He'd gotten misty-eyed, and I'd done the best to hide the lump in my throat. Not just a reaction to his pain, but to the deep, aching want that pierced my chest.

I wanted to be the person he introduced to his family. I wanted to be the man to make Nikos Ridge fall in love.

What I'm not brave enough to do right now is put a name to the feelings that are growing inside my rib cage like the flowers gracing the garden. I've always been quick to fall for people, and I don't want to get hurt - not like with Geoff. And besides, I know full well that Nikos isn't mine to keep. We're on a deadline, not meant to last. All I can do is enjoy the here and now, and not let myself catch inconvenient feelings.

I don't want to break the spell of a sleepy Nikos, enjoying watching him breathing softly, his face completely relaxed. I want to trace the curve of his jaw with my finger, to memorise every line of him, but I try to stay as still as possible so as not to wake him.

I must move, though, or maybe the sun warming his skin is enough to rouse him from sleep. Nikos blinks awake, his golden-brown eyes catching mine.

‘Kalimera.' His voice is lower than normal, rough from sleep. He squeezes me tighter, and I relax into his grasp. ‘Did you sleep well?'

I reply in Greek, the words for good morning rolling off my tongue with forced ease. ‘Kalimera, agape mou.'

Agape mou - My love.

His tired eyes widen in pride. ‘You remembered.'

‘I did,' I say into his chest. I can't get over the way he smells, especially here - I could drink in his scent forever. ‘Did you sleep well?'

‘Mmm.' He makes a satisfied noise and buries his nose in my curls. ‘How could I not with you by my side?'

My heart summersaults, and I have a hard time pretending that it's a flippant comment he's made hundreds of times with people he's slept with, not with how sincere he sounds. Not when I can feel the beat of his heart pick up as he presses a kiss to my hair.

‘What do you want to do today?' I ask, trying to distract myself. I can't catch feelings. I can't.

‘I thought we'd go into town for an early breakfast, and I can show you around.' Nikos sounds tentative, and I wonder if it's because town holds more memories for him, or because he's worried about being recognised. ‘If that's alright with you?'

‘I would love that.' I snuggle deeper into his embrace for a moment, allowing myself the luxury of being held. I had no idea that Nikos was such a cuddler, but he seems even less inclined to get up than me. But eventually I need to get up and use the bathroom, so I reluctantly free myself from his arms and get up.

When I get back from washing up and brushing my teeth, Nikos is in shorts and a linen button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and I have to stop myself from staring. He looks like a movie star on set in Greece.

As soon as I have the thought, I mentally smack myself over the head. Nikos is a movie star, and we are in Greece.

I'm the luckiest man in the world right now.

‘Ready to go?' Nikos raises an eyebrow at me, and I pull out shorts and a light cotton t-shirt from my suitcase, throwing them on.

‘Whenever you are,' I say.

He leaves me reluctantly to wash up too, and when he's back I can't resist but kiss him, his mouth minty from toothpaste. He hasn't shaved since we got here, and the stubble on his jaw is tantalising. But for once I'm more interested in going out and doing something with Nikos than in pulling him back to bed.

His hands travel down my back to cup my ass, but he leaves it at that. He must be feeling the same way I am, because he pulls back and extends a hand. I take it and he leads me down the stairs - I'm careful to use the banister, not wanting to give him any anxiety - and out onto the gravel path that leads to the dirt road.

We walk in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the breeze and the sound of the waves far below us. It's gorgeous and serene and private, and I wonder what it would have been like to grow up here as a kid.

‘This is where I got my stage name from.' Nikos stops us when we reach the top of an incline in the winding road. He turns me back in the direction we came and points, and I take in the view. ‘I used to climb it as a kid.'

There's a hill - a ridge - in the distance, a natural enclosure encircling the area where Nikos' family home is.

‘I love that.' I lean into him, relishing how solid and strong he is. ‘That even as you started a new life, you kept a bit of your old life with you.'

Nikos rubs a hand up and down the outside of my arm. ‘I never thought about it that way. It's…nice, when you put it like that.'

‘I'm happy to help.' Because I am. I like being the one here with Nikos as he confronts his past and reclaims a part of a place that clearly means so much to him. ‘So what's your real last name?'

He doesn't even hesitate. ‘Drakos.'

The trust in the confession warms me through. ‘Thank you,' I say, and Nikos drops his arm from around my shoulders and takes my hand in his, squeezing. ‘Nikos Drakos. It sounds right. It fits you.'

‘It's a common surname in Greece. In fact, you'll laugh at this, but it translates to dragon.'

‘Dragon?' I gawp.

‘Or ogre.'

I can't help but smile. ‘If your management finds out about that, they'd have a marketing field day.'

‘No one will find out,' Nikos says almost too seriously, as if the mode is suddenly ruined. ‘No one can find out.'

Anonymity is important to the rich and famous, but I can't help his reasoning is tied to the trauma of his childhood.

We keep on walking - it's not too far to town to walk, but it's definitely a bit of a hike. When we round a bend, I stop. There's a donkey standing by the side of the road.

‘Is that a donkey?'

‘Yeah,' Nikos replies. ‘They're all over in this area. They're wild, but they're not going to bite, if that's what you're afraid of. Not unless you really annoy them, or you tease them with food you won't give up.'

‘No, I love it. I'm not afraid.' I can't help my grin. I love animals, especially the four-legged sort. ‘They just…wander around here?'

‘Yeah,' Nikos says, his arm slung around my waist. ‘They trim the grass and don't bother anyone much. It works out great for everyone. They like to be pet, though. Or at least they did, last time I was here.'

The donkey is, indeed, looking at us with a hopeful tilt of its head. Nikos looks down at me, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘Do you want to?'

‘Yes!' My enthusiasm makes him chuckle, but he takes a hold of my wrist with the hand not wrapped around my waist and stretches my arm out.

I squeal as the donkey trots forward and butts its head towards my waiting hand. I touch its velvety-soft nose and it makes a happy noise, so I keep going, stroking its forehead. I feel like Snow White, except in the middle of Greece.

‘Do you know they have a button that makes their ears go back?' Nikos asks. I love the humour in his tone, so unlike the sadness in his voice yesterday.

‘Huh?' I turn to him, pausing my petting, and the donkey nudges against my hand insistently until I resume.

Nikos looks at me, the edges of his eyes crinkled with his smile, and such a look of adoration on his face that it honestly almost hurts. He picks up my hand again and presses it firmly to the donkey's forehead. I break out into laughter when the donkey's ears go from upright to back behind it like airplane wings. The donkey looks affronted and gives a huff before it trots away to the side of the road to eat some more grass.

‘See?' Nikos bends down and captures my lips in a tender kiss.

I wind my arms around the neck of this man who misses his mother, who likes animals, who can cook a mean honey donut, who takes a good five minutes to become coherent after he wakes up. It's like double vision. The real Nikos, versus the one that the rest of the world gets to see. I don't know how many people are gifted with the real Nikos. I'm honoured to be one of them, but in a way that feels like the sweetest kind of pain.

‘My Yiayia used to sing a song to me, about a donkey with big ears.' Nikos closes his eyes, giving in to the memory. ‘I used to remember it, but now, like the other memories, they're lost to me.'

There are tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, and I struggle to hold them back. Nikos notices anyway, pulling out of the kiss and running a thumb beneath my eyelashes to catch an errant tear.

‘What's wrong?' He bites his lip.

I shake my head, not able to say much over the lump in my throat. The trust that he's put in me is incredible, the way he's let me in. It's a gift, to see the truth of a person, to get down to the heart of them. He's bared his soul for me, but it won't matter.

It can never matter, because he's Nikos Ridge and I'm just his secret, no matter how much I wish that wasn't true.

‘Honey,' he whispers, pulling me into a hug. I blink against the linen of his shirt, trying to compose myself. ‘I know. I know.'

And I believe he does, because I see the same pain, the same struggle, in his expression too.

‘Come on,' I say, drawing in a shuddering breath. ‘Let's go get that coffee.'

It doesn't take much longer to walk into the small town. We find a café that has seats overlooking the ocean. There are fishing boats tied up at a nearby dock, and the shining sun and lapping waves help to melt away some of my melancholy. When a server drops off menus, Nikos translates for me since it's entirely in Greek, and I order eggs with feta and tomato, sprinkled with fresh oregano and a black coffee - or café. He orders fruit, making a joke about needing to maintain his godlike physique, and a fancy iced frape.

‘I didn't think that hearing you speak Greek would be a turn on.' I trace the veins of his inner forearm with a finger. There's nothing more alluring in my book than a man wearing a shirt with rolled-up sleeves.

He laughs. ‘If I knew, I'd speak Greek all the time. Maybe when we get home?'

‘Yeah,' I say with a wink. ‘When we get home.' I ignore the way that the word home feels like a knife slipped between my ribs.

Nikos says a bunch of stuff in Greek as the older female waiter comes back to drop off our food, and she looks scandalised, telling him off good-naturedly as she takes food and drinks off her tray and places them on our table. I flush, wondering what he said, but the wicked humour in his eyes tells me I'd sink into the ground if I knew.

She leaves us to eat, and the intensity of earlier is gone I'm grateful. I can't afford to catch feelings and the light and breezy conversation as Nikos tells me all about the town we're in, how it's changed since he last came here, is the perfect distraction. The food is divine, and the setting is postcard perfect. There are cats sunning themselves on the sea wall, and families making their way to the beach to enjoy the gorgeous morning.

The café fills up, and a man wearing a priest's collar sits next to us and stares at our intertwined hands. For a moment I wonder if this town is small or religious enough that two men showing affection is a problem. But then he meets my eyes and gives me a small smile. ‘Are you here on a honeymoon?' he asks in British-accented English. Not someone local, then.

I immediately flush at his question, tongue-tied with how much I want to answer yes. But Nikos gets there first, his hand tightening in mine. ‘No. Just vacationing.'

‘My mistake,' he says softly. ‘It's just that you look so very much in love.'

There's a wistfulness in his voice that's unmissable, something deeper than simple loneliness. It makes me ache for the priest, the way that he smiles sadly at us. Like he wishes he was in our place.

Nikos' face goes tight, and my stomach drops. It has to be that the mention of love has made him uncomfortable. It's the reminder I need to get out of my head and back into reality. No matter what my feelings for Nikos may be, they're not what I'm meant to have.

‘You're here for Mount Athos?' Nikos redirects the conversation, but at least he doesn't draw away from me. I take some comfort in that. I recognise the name of the holy mountain that Nikos told me about earlier, where religious men would go to make pilgrimages.

‘Yes,' the priest says. ‘My boat leaves tomorrow. I'm here to atone for something I've done. Or, well, in truth - I'm here to ask a question of God. And probably also myself. Whether keeping secrets like I have is worth it simply to maintain the path I thought I was always meant to take, or whether I'm denying myself the chance to live as God is giving me the opportunity to.'

He nods at our intertwined hands. ‘Love is the only thing that makes life worth it. I can tell you have something special. Keep it.'

The priest stands up and puts a bill on the table, then smiles at us one more time. ‘Adio.'

‘Harika pu se ida,' Nikos replies.

We're left alone, except for a crowd of monks passing by. Nikos doesn't say anything for a few long minutes, and then he shakes his head, like he's clearing a daydream. ‘Can I show you around? We can go see the church where I was baptised - it's gorgeous. Really… gold.'

‘Sure.' I stand up as Nikos pulls money from his pocket to leave on the table. ‘Show me your town. I want to see all your favourite spots. I bet this is where you snuck your first kiss.'

I elbow him in the ribs, and he laughs again, grabbing me around the waist and tucking me under his arm as we walk down a narrow side street. ‘And my first beer. And my first cigarette. And my first joint. But none of them are as good as my favourite first.'

Looking up at him, I see that adoration again. That contentment. That emotion that I'm too afraid to name, written all over his face. My heart skips a beat. ‘What's that?'

‘My first time here with you,' he says as he holds me tight, like he's never going to let me go.